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Awix (3310 KP) rated Eddie The Eagle (2016) in Movies

Feb 17, 2018 (Updated Feb 17, 2018)

Rather baffling sports comedy bio-pic from the producers of the Kingsman series; shares several key personnel and obsession with reverse snobbery. Working class lad dreams of becoming Olympian, is cruelly rejected by posh sports authorities, battles adversity to come a heroic last at the Olympics.

Theoretically based on a true story, but the actual facts of Michael Edwards' life are almost entirely discarded: the most interesting character in the film is his trainer (Jackman), who isn't even a real person. The film seems more concerned with endlessly banging on about how awful the upper classes are and presenting Edwards as a loveable clown; it's not as if this actually helps the film, because it's not really very funny. Deploys various sports movie clichés reasonably effectively; the fact that the climax is presented not as 'can he win?' but 'can he avoid killing himself?' is implicitly amusing, I suppose. Potentially an interesting topic for a film; not in this version, though.

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David McK (3557 KP) rated The Painted Man (the Demon Cycle, Book 1) in Books

Jan 30, 2019

First in "The Demon Cycle", this is very much what I would term a dark fantasy novel: not urban fantasy (like The Dresden Files), not heroic fantasy (David Gemmell) and not high fantasy (Lord of the Rings).

This is set in a world where Demons rise through the ground every night to terrorise/slowly cull the few remaining humans, the novel follows three seperate survivors of such attacks. It's pretty obvious that they are, eventually, going to meet up, which only happens in the latter porion of the book, by which stage one of the survivors has become The Painted Man (i.e. covered in magical wards, which the demons can't stand) of the title.

An enjoyable enough read, but I did find this to be occassionally hard going. I also picked it up when Waterstones had it on sale for about £3: for that price, I'm happy enough, but I also wouldn't be looking for the sequels at full price either.

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976) in Movies

Mar 28, 2020

Almost wholly nuts Taiwanese kung fu movie. A blind assassin wielding the dreaded flying guillotine (basically a sort of buzz saw on the end of a length of chain) sets out for revenge against legendary heroic martial arts teacher the One-Armed Boxer. Whose kung fu will prove stronger?

Very little about this film isn't completely ridiculous (the main character visibly has his 'missing' arm stuffed down the front of his shirt, while it almost entirely eschews a second act in favour of about eight random kung fu fights in a row) but it still manages to be almost completely awesome, full of energy and imagination (the fight between our unidextrous hero and a Yoga expert with telescopic arms is a particular highlight). The plot is fairly routine honour-and-revenge-based stuff, but the action sequences are inventively choreographed and lots of fun. Hugely entertaining and very funny, sometimes even on purpose.